Logo U. Osnabrueck Institute of Computer ScienceKnowledge-Based Systems Research Group

Highspeed KURT


Fig 1: High Speed KURT (fast moving autonomous mobile robot) is an autonomous mobile robot that drives with 4.0 m/s (14.4 km/h) in our corridors (reliably controlled!!). We can control these high speed robots with some special real-time algorithms and a tricky robot control architecture which combines the algorithms with the robot hardware. (Foto: www.dieterklein.de)

Specification

Our high speed KURT is a modified version of a standard KURT2 [1]. KURT is a German acronym for experimental robot platform for sewerage inspection. It is the prototype of a wireless autonomous mobile robot, with a size of 45 cm (length) x 33 cm (width) x 26 cm (hight) and a weight if 10.4 kg. It is equipped with a Panasonic tough-book (+4.2 kg, 800 MHz pentium 3) and a 3D laser range finder (based on a Sick LMS, +7.0 kg) that increases the height to 47 cm and the weight to totally 22.6 kg. For indoor environements the front and rear wheels have no tread pattern to enhance rotating. KURT2 operates for about 4 hours with one battery charge (28 NiMH cells, capacity: 4500 mAh). The core of the robot is a Pentium-III-600 MHz with 384 MB RAM and Real-Time Linux. An embedded 16-Bit CMOS microcontroller is used to control the motor and lower sensors (Phytec. Minimodul C167, inc. flash rom). It's current maximum velocity that we can control with our robot control architecture and the laser range finder (about 70 scans/sec, 181 values in 180 degrees) is 4.0 m/s (14.4 km/h) and is reached by two 90 Watt Maxon motors (transmission 1:14) .

Videos

KURT2 drives in the corridors of campus Birlinghoven. The following short videos (encoded with divx), show the robot in action as well as the view from it's cameras.

Paper

Some publications.